Obstacles within the International Community: The Exercise of Afghan Women’s Agency for Peace in Post-Conflict Reconstruction by Stephanie W. Hampton Ultimately…women must be involved in the peace process not only because they suffer disproportionately, or because they have previously been excluded, but because their contribution to the world is invaluable. —Felicity Hall and Mikele Aboitiz1 Under the Taliban’s draconian interpretation of Shari’a law, Afghan women were forced from public life and publicly executed for minor infractions. Yet, in just over two years since the Taliban fell, the women of Afghanistan have entered the political arena and successfully pressed for specific language in the Afghan constitution enshrining women’s rights as human rights. From being the most oppressed women in the world to enjoying the promise of more seats in Parliament than many Western nations, Afghan women have clearly made gigantic strides in their quest for peace and security. Their remarkable progress, however, is overshadowed by the current unstable security situation in Afghanistan and the lack of international political and military assistance which are needed to consolidate the successes that the Afghan women have realized. How has this seemingly rapid transformation of Afghan women occurred? The answer may partially lie in the concept of development as freedom put forth by Amartya Sen in his 1999 book, Development as Freedom.2 He proffers a new paradigm which includes not only GDP data, but human development factors, such as Infant Mortality Rates (IMR) and literacy rates, to determine a nation’s level of development in terms of sustainable development. In his view, people are not simply human capital to be considered only as one part of three in an economic equation for development, but people—liberated from ‘unfreedoms’ such as poverty and illiteracy— who can build capacity through their own agency as the Afghan women have done. Agency is expressed in this case by the unhampered exercise of individual effort for betterment of self and community in an interconnecting, empowering, and reciprocal network of personal, political, civil, social, and economic freedoms. In elucidating this socially valuative approach to development, Sen argues that individual reasoned agency and freedom (or more specifically, the absence of unfreedoms which restrain individual agency) work synergistically to foster and complement an array of freedoms, which in turn benefits the family, the community, and the nation.3 Stephanie W. Hampton is a human geographer and writer at Western Oregon University. 37 Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 38 HAMPTON Individual freedom is quintessentially a social product, and there is a two-way relation between (1) social arrangements to expand individual freedoms and (2) the use of individual freedoms not only to improve the respective lives but also to make the social arrangements more appropriate and effective. 4 War is waged on the bodies of the women and children who are the primary victims of war. Owing no allegiance to a formal state, warlords—not bound by international law—commit atrocities upon these vulnerable populations with impunity, creating whole new categories of egregious war crimes. Political and military strategies pursue the methodical destruction of an entire culture’s economic, governmental, and social infrastructure by targeting women as the vessels of a culture, the nurturers of the family, community, and nation. Systematic gender violence through forced pregnancy, slavery and sexual violence seek the extinction of an entire culture — supported at the highest level of military command.5 Women and children experience war and war’s aftermath differently than men and are disproportionately harmed by war Women and children experience war and war’s aftermath differently than men and are disproportionately harmed by war. In direct contrast with World War II where civilian casualties were approximately 65 percent,6 civilians are now being targeted as a weapon of war so that approximately 80 to 90 percent of casualties are civilian, and 80 to 90 percent of these are women and girls. Out of the thirty-five million refuges and displaced persons in the world, 80 percent are women and girls.7 In any war, the women and children always lose. In the aftermath of war, it is often women- and children-led families who constitute the majority in post-conflict nations such as Afghanistan, where approximately 54 to 60 percent of the population is female.8 Under extreme conditions of deprivation of the basic necessities of life and the constant threat of violence, it is often left to women to gather any remaining family and seek safety, sustenance, and shelter. When the family is secured, women’s attention turns outward to the community where they organize themselves to provide schooling, medical care, and support groups for traumatized persons. In Afghanistan, where women’s community and political involvement was forbidden and even their physical movements curtailed, women often went underground at great risk to themselves, during periods of conflict or repression, as Kofi Annan has said of such women in post conflict situations, to “maintain the social fabric…replace destroyed social services and tend to the sick and wounded. As a result, women are the prime advocates of peace.”9 Women also have the greatest motivation to seek peace, for they have the most to lose, and the least to gain, by war. As such major stakeholders in war, they deserve an opportunity to contribute towards the construction of a sustainable peace. Women have always been on the frontlines in post-conflict situations. Out of the necessity borne of the huge demographic shift that war brings, women shoulder Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations WOMEN’S AGENCY 39 decision-making responsibilities and roles formerly gendered as male and, in the temporary vacuum of leadership in formal government, build capacity within themselves to carve out new gender roles based on their abilities and skills, often gained through dire necessity. These changes result in greater self-confidence and a self-motivated desire for greater political participation and power through the organizations they create, supporting Sen’s observation that freedoms foster other freedoms. Consequent to these gender role changes and the paucity of authority, the post-conflict period remains the best window of opportunity to effect changes in the political, economic, and social climate of the country. When the fabric of society is rent, it can be rewoven in a new way. One of the tools used to remake a society is gender mainstreaming. Mandated under Security Council Resolution 1325, gender mainstreaming is a perspective designed to integrate women’s and girl’s needs, experiences, and special requirements into the mainstream effort as an integral part, not simply as isolated “women’s” programs that may be underfunded, understaffed, and forgotten to rebuild society. The gendered roles which apply to men, women, girls, and boys determine individual status which then determines how household, and reconstruction, benefits are apportioned. What does it mean to mainstream gender? What do we mean when we talk of gender? Why is gender mainstreaming a valuable tool in the success of reconstruction in the post-conflict arena? Gender is the “socially constructed rather than biologically determined roles of men and women as well as the relationships between men and women in a given society at a specific time and place.”10 The gendered roles which apply to men, women, girls, and boys determine individual status which then determines how household, and reconstruction, benefits are apportioned. Gender mainstreaming was defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1997 as: The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action…in any areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programmes in all political, economic, and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.11 The goal of gender mainstreaming is not simply be the insertion of gendered language into documents or the mandating of gender advisory units without funding and staffing, but the “transformation of unequal social and institutional structures into equal and just structures for both women and men.”12 The inclusion of gender advisors who are well versed in assessment tools to determine how war differentially affects gender roles and risks improves the delivery of humanitarian aid and informs reconstruction efforts. To achieve this degree of improvement, it is necessary that Winter/Spring 2004 40 HAMPTON these gender advisors are not tokens but are funded, staffed and included in high- level decision making. Gender analysis uses a variety of methods to understand the relationships between the two sexes: Their respective access to and decision-making power over family, community, and international resources; and their respective activities and the relative valuation of those activities. These analyses, done by a gender advisor in a post- conflict region, can provide insight into how organizations may best distribute humanitarian aid, provide appropriate levels and different kinds of security for all groups, and support local efforts to free women’s agency from constraints to allow their active participation in reconstruction. Women’s agency is exercised by the Afghan women who, though denied a public role by the Taliban, organized themselves privately to serve the community both within and outside Afghanistan.13 When the Taliban fell, the Afghan women came to the fore and, by so doing, ensured their inclusion in the peace process as well as a quick start for schools, medical facilities, and psychosocial counseling for war crime victims. Afghan women (and the men who support them) have managed to assist Afghan refugees in the communities of Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Quetta, Pakistan.